German broadcaster ZDF has lodged an official complaint with Euro 2008 organiser Uefa about last night's semi-final TV blackout, with one senior executive branding the affair "the most annoying balls-up imaginable".

ZDF's director of sport, Dieter Gruschwitz, added that the blackout was Uefa's "technical Achilles heel", after coverage of Germany's thrilling 3-2 victory over Turkey was disrupted by a thunderstorm.

Last night's storm hit Vienna, where Uefa's Euro 2008 media operation is based, during the second half of the semi-final and knocked out the coverage being beamed to broadcasters around the world, including the BBC's Match of the Day Live, for several minutes.

Chaos ensued as broadcasters scrambled to find alternative coverage while waiting for Uefa to restore the TV feed, with one Hong Kong channel reportedly resorting to having a presenter relaying commentary provided by a spectator in the stadium on a mobile phone.

The BBC, which had to resort to airing BBC Radio 5 Live's audio coverage when electrical storms disrupted Uefa's global TV feed, received 154 complaints and lost hundreds of thousands of viewers each time coverage was disrupted.

Heavy storms and winds of up to 130kph in Vienna were blamed for the blackouts in Uefa's global TV feed.

The Euro 2008 press centre tent next to Vienna's Ernst Happel Stadium was also evacuated at around midnight due to strong winds.

German broadcaster ZDF, which still enjoyed record ratings of almost 40 million viewers despite the technical glitch, hit out at Uefa today after fans had to rely on TV reporter Bela Rethy giving a blow-by-blow account of events in a radio-style telephone link when the multiple disruptions occurred.

ZDF and Austrian broadcaster ORF eventually switched to a feed from Swiss television, the only other available broadcast, which had a separate feed directly to the stadium in Basle where the drama of Germany's late winner over Turkey was being played out.

A ZDF spokesman added: "The Swiss were the only ones in the world who had an extra cable to their home stadium in Basle."

Even when pictures were restored, a delay in the timing of the telephone link-up to commentary meant that viewers in Germany, which also has a sizeable Turkish population, were informed of action seconds before the TV feed. The same thing happened to the BBC coverage.

"It took away a lot of the suspense," said one commentator in newspaper Die Welt today.

Other broadcasters, among them French television station TF1, were forced to show archive pictures and were left without any commentary for minutes at a time.

"Here's how the game ended on TV in Hong Kong," wrote Hiranand. "Five guys in a studio listening in on a phone call between one of the presenters and someone sitting in the stands attempting to describe what's happened over the noise of the crowd and an awful mobile phone connection. Of course, it's all in Cantonese. Brilliant."

In the UK, Red Bee Media, which manages the transmission of the BBC's TV channels, had to deal with the intermittent blackouts by feeding Radio 5 Live coverage to bemused BBC1 viewers, who were seeing only an onscreen message saying "We are sorry for the break in this programme and are trying to correct the fault".

On Red Bee Media's logs of the Uefa feed it recorded that the first blackout kicked in at 9.02pm BST for five minutes and 56 seconds. Thirty seconds into the blackout, Radio 5 Live coverage was inserted.

A "reserve" feed - a simplified version of the broadcast with no graphics - from the international broadcast centre in Vienna became available, but full graphics did not return until 9.09pm.

At 9.21pm a second disruption occurred, with UK viewers only able to listen to Miroslav Klose putting Germany 2-1 ahead in the 79th minute via Radio 5 Live.

While pictures were restored after three minutes this time, Radio 5 Live coverage ran until 9.31pm, meaning that UK viewers were informed of Turkey's equaliser ahead of TV coverage showing the goal. There was another brief disruption in the feed at 9.35pm.

A Red Bee Media spokeswoman said that it did not get the complete main Uefa feed from Vienna back until 9.41pm.

Uefa insisted that all international broadcasters use its feed for the European Championships, which are being co-hosted by Austria and Switzerland.

National broadcasters had argued they would like to control their own feed of the tournament.

Uefa is holding its daily Euro 2008 press conference in Vienna today and is expected to address the blackout issue.

The BBC said today it had received 154 complaints about the loss of coverage.

A BBC spokeswoman added: "This was due to the loss of the host feed provided by the host broadcaster, Uefa.

"All countries across the world receiving the feed lost pictures and sound. We had people ringing up to ask what had happened, but it was more reaction than complaints."

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